A traditional cable television distribution network includes a network designed to provide subscribers with standard cable video channels. The cable television network may include a hierarchy of networks including video servers linked by one or more networks. The standard approach is to place all the servers in a centralized cluster to serve a market area. An example market area may be the Bay Area in California.
The centralized cluster is generally called a Video-Hubbing Office (VHO). The VHO may receive national content from a national network, wherein the national network receives the national content, for example, by satellite. The received national content is encoded and distributed to the local markets for transport. The local markets may include a VHO coupled to additional routers and video servers. In addition, a VHO may include regional routers and video servers coupled to one or more local switches. The VHO, in addition to receiving the national content, receives local content. The local content is prepared for distribution along with the national content through the regional routers and video servers, the local switches, and any other networks coupling the VHO with the subscribers.
In the traditional cable television distribution network, the video equipment, for example the servers and the routers, are very expensive, whereas the distribution network is relatively less expensive. The actual transmission of the broadcast video signal uses cables (fiber and coax), splitters, and amplifiers to carry, split, and boost the broadcast video signal to reach as many subscribers as possible. In this system, the addition of new customers only requires the addition of more cables, splitters, and amplifiers.
However, this cable distribution network provides very limited functionally. For example, the above-described system cannot easily provide individual content, such as video-on-demand or network-based PVR, or advanced video services offered by, for example, by Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). In addition, the networks cost model used as the foundation in designing the cable television distribution network described above does not apply to the more advanced transmission networks used to provide more advanced functionality and more advanced services.